Kellanved's Reach by Ian Cameron Esslemont

The enigmatic sorcerer Kellanved has seized control of Malaz Island. His cohort and ally Surly plots the conquest of her homeland, the Napan Isles. Meanwhile, the mainland of Quon Tali is wracked by war and civil war. Purge and Tali are locked in incessant conflict in the west, whilst to the east the Bloorian League is trying to crush the city of Gris. Conflict stalks the world but great changes are coming in the warrens as well, as Kellanved seeks the Throne of Shadow and also the First Throne of the T'lan Imass, the Army of Dust and Bone...

Kellanved's Reach is the third novel in Ian Esslemont's Path to Ascendancy series, which acts as a prequel to both the Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence by Steven Erikson and Esslemont's own earlier Malazan Empire series. Following on from Dancer's Lament and Deadhouse Landing, this book continues the story of Kellanved and Dancer, the founders of the Malazan Empire.

The events described in this trilogy, and in this single novel especially, are vast, epic and the stuff of myth. Kellanved's seizure of the First Throne, his alliance with the T'lan Imass and the military campaigns which saw the Malazan Empire start coming together have been referenced in hushed tones throughout the sixteen novels of both of Erikson and Esslemont's original series, so to see those events first-hand is thrilling. Or rather it should be.

If one word comes to mind when reading Kellanved's Reach it is "rushed". The book is only 330 pages long (barely a third as long as some of Erikson's books) and Esslemont tries to fit into this modest page count no less than five major military campaigns, a major subplot with Kellanved and Dancer exploring the Shadow Realm and the stories of numerous POV characters. There simply isn't enough room to do this justice and as a result we end up bouncing back and forth between characters and stories like a pinball machine. Massive, major events (like the nascent empire's capture of the strategically vital city of Cawn) take place in sentences, let along paragraphs, and the epic final battle which ends with Kellanved's crowning feels perfunctory at best.

This is a shame because the improvement in Esslemont's writing and character voice which has been building since Dancer's Lament continues apace here. The early chapters, which relax a little to focus on the military campaigns on opposite coasts of the continent, are well-written and excellent, and it's fun to see future important characters like Greymane and Skinner arise from the masses to start their own steps down the road to destiny. But around the halfway mark the pace accelerates and suddenly major plot events are whizzing by like they've been shot out of a machine gun.

There's still much to enjoy here, of course, even if the later chapters of the book do start feeling more like a plot summary than a novel. I suspect it will be even more frustrating as - if as seems possible - more books in this series follow; Path to Ascendancy was contracted for three books but the series has sold extremely well, so it may be extended. There's plenty of scope if so (the book ends with Kellanved crowned but only a very small part of Quon Tali under his control), and it'd be interesting to fill the gaps in between this book and Night of Knives (set roughly 100 years later), where Kellanved's plans are finally fully realised.

Kellanved's Reach (***½) is a reasonably solid addition to the Malazan mythos, with some genuinely exciting, myth-making moments. It also feels like the novel should have been either twice as long as it is, or its events should have been split over two books. As it stands, the brake-neck pacing means that the emotional resonance and dramatic power of some long-awaited scenes are diluted. The book is available in the UK now and next month in the USA.

Amazon release full trailer for GOOD OMENS

Amazon have released the full trailer for their Good Omens mini-series, based on the 1990 novel by Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

The six-episode mini-series, which stars David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Jon Hamm, Jack Whitehall, Miranda Richardson and Nick Offerman, will debut on Amazon Prime Video on 31 May.

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin

Since leaving the Tombs of Atuan more than twenty years ago, the former priestess Tenar has found a new life and a new family on the island of Gont. When her husband dies and her son goes to sea, she finds herself alone. When an injured child comes into her care and the wizard Ged returns to his home island after an arduous journey, Tenar finds her life changing once more.

Tehanu is an unusual book. It is the fourth novel in the Earthsea series but it is very different in tone and content to the original trilogy. It is a quieter, more reflective book, less concerned with adventure than it is with the musings over the value of life, love, freedom, motherhood and responsibility.

The book focuses on Tenar, the main character of The Tombs of Atuan, the second book of the series. We learn that, despite the romantic tension between her and Ged, they never realised that affection and instead went their different ways, Ged rising to become Archmage of Earthsea (as seen in The Farthest Shore) and Tenar choosing a quiet life as a farmer's wife, despite being given the opportunity to live in luxury in Havnor or learn the ways of magic from Ged's old tutor. The book sees Tenar reflecting on her decisions, mixing satisfaction with raising two children well with regrets that perhaps she could have made other choices.

In this sense the book is about the hesitancy of middle age, when one is still young enough to find a new career or relationship or path to happiness, but old enough for some weariness and cynicism to set in. Tenar and Ged are now mature adults rather than the callow youths of their first meeting and now have to ask some serious questions about how they are going to spend their latter years.

The book is reflective but not devoid of incident. A forbidding enemy has arrived on the island and Ged and Tenar have to face down and defeat him. Dragons are seen and magic is performed. But Tehanu is not an epic fantasy novel of action and sorcery and explosions, but a book that uses fantasy to explore the common, human condition. On that level it is reflective and melancholy, but powerfully and beautifully written.

Tehanu (****½) is an introspective, quietly powerful fantasy novel. It is available now in the UK and USA as part of The Books of Earthsea omnibus edition.

Gratuitous Lists: The Twenty Best BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER Episodes

I recently rewatched Joss Whedon's 1990s supernatural drama Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its entirety for a pub quiz (our team came fourth, so that wasn't quite as successful as hoped), which was a great chance to re-appraise the show from the distance of twenty years or so. As a result, here's a Gratuitous List of (in my opinion) the twenty best episodes of the series.

The stories are not presented in quality order because at this level, there's not much between these episodes. This is the show firing at its very best and frankly all of these episodes are worth watching.

Prophecy Girl 

Season 1, Episode 12

The first season of Buffy had mostly contained “monster-of-the-week” episodes, linked together by a vague story arc about the evil Master trying to escape his prison under the town of Sunnydale. In the Season 1 finale, he succeeds, killing Buffy in the process.

Joss Whedon’s first time both writing and directing an episode is notable for elevating the entire feel of the show, both in scale (this is an epic-feeling episode, despite the low budget) and emotional power. Killing Buffy is a surprising move, as is the straightforward method of bringing her back (CPR; she was unconscious just for a minute or two). But the episode wins through Sarah Michelle Gellar’s powerful performance as a 16-year-old girl abruptly told she is going to die and there’s nothing she can do to stop it, and how she deals with it. This is the moment Buffy elevated itself to the next level, and started becoming a very interesting show indeed.

School Hard

Season 2, Episode 3

At some point almost every show tries to “do Die Hard” and Buffy’s answer is to do it in the high school, which is besieged by vampires led by newcomers Spike and Drusilla. The episode is notable for introducing those two iconic characters, who would go on to wreak havoc across both Buffy and spin-off show Angel for the next seven years, and also for its humour and its action. Particularly interesting are the first hints that the authorities of Sunnydale are well aware of the supernatural craziness in town and are working to suppress all knowledge of it, foreshadowing the main story arc of Season 3.

Surprise/Innocence 
Season 2, Episodes 13-14

It was easy to dismiss Buffy early on as cliché: the teenage female protagonist falling in love with a vampire was hackneyed even by the late 1990s, let alone a decade later and the Twilight phenomenon. But Buffy upended that cliché when Buffy finally slept with her vampire boyfriend Angel…causing him to lose his soul and revert back to being an undead killing machine.

According to Joss Whedon, this is the moment when realised it was okay to “be a dick” to his characters, and the cruel taunting of Buffy by Angel after his transformation – David Boreanaz showing his acting range beyond "brooding handsomely" for the first time – and Buffy’s subsequent guilt-ridden sorrow is an example of this. But Buffy is made of sterner stuff and the epic finale to the story, involving rocket launchers, dismemberment and a water-drenched battle almost to the death sees her dish out some payback. It was also bold of Whedon to keep Angel evil for the rest of the season, setting the scene for a lot more angst and anger.

Passion 

Season 2, Episode 17

With Angel turned evil, the question arises if Buffy had done the right thing by allowing him to live based on emotions and the hope he might be turned back. Passion pulls no punches whatsoever as it answers that question in the cruellest way possible, with Angelus embarking on a murdering spree culminating in the brutal murder of a regular character, the near-deaths of several others and the long-awaited sight of Giles fully cutting loose with his “Ripper” persona (which results in yet more mayhem and a major conflagration).

It’s a beautifully-written episode, but a brutal and gruelling one with the entire cast on fire (special props to Anthony Head for channelling Giles’s utter murderous rage at Angel) that asks some pretty damn hard questions and doesn’t offer easy answers. 

Becoming
Season 2, Episodes 21-22

The Season 2 finale sees the final confrontation between Buffy and Angel, but it also throws in a whole load of curveballs, from Drusilla taking down a second Slayer to Willow discovering she can use magic to Xander betraying Buffy’s trust in a key moment (sadly, only paid mild lip services to later on) to a deep exploration of Angel’s backstory, which gave Whedon the idea of a spin-off show focusing on the character. Also in the mix is Buffy’s mother finally discovering her true job and Spike teaming up with Buffy for the first (and a very long way from the last) time.

But the focus of the story is firmly on the tragic battle between Buffy and Angel and the moment when Angel is finally cured…but Buffy still has to kill him to stop events he’s set in motion from destroying the world. It’s a harsh moment (Whedon being a dick to his characters again) and one that’s sold by the actors and especially Christophe Beck’s excellent score.

Band Candy
Season 3, Episode 6

Buffy was many things over its run, from romance to tragic relationship story to intense drama. But something it did on a reasonably regular basis was comedy, finding the ridiculous in every situation that emerged and sometimes just going outright silly. Bandy Candy – in which cursed chocolate turns Sunnydale’s adults into teenagers again – is the silliest of such premises, but is also brilliantly whimsical. It’s funny with terrific performances from the adult cast relishing the chance to behave like their younger cohorts. And whilst it’s silly, it does further the season arc and explores more of Giles and Joyce’s characters in a very amusing fashion (which pays off in the later episode Earshot, when Buffy finds out what they got up to).

The Wish

Season 3, Episode 9

What starts off as Buffy-by-the-numbers – a humiliated and hurt Cordelia lashes out at her friends – suddenly transforms into a dystopian nightmare as Sunnydale is plunged into an alternate timeline where Buffy never came to town. Most of the regular characters are dead or have been transformed into vampires (most memorably Willow), the Master is still alive and Angel has been tortured for years on end as the Master’s plaything. The first appearance by later series regular Anya is certainly memorable, epic and downright disturbing.

The Zeppo

Season 3, Episode 13

This episode is weirdly experimental. The main threat is the reopening of the Hellmouth and the destruction of the entire world, representing the greatest threat Buffy has faced since the Season 1 finale and arguably the greatest she’ll face again until the end of Season 5. However, this story takes place entirely in the background, relayed through snatches of dialogue. Instead, the focus is on Xander as he gets dragged into a very weird side-story involving an undead bromance, an unexpected liaison with Faith, an awesome car and a huge bomb. A key episode for establishing Xander’s character and for showcasing the meta-awareness of the series of its own tropes, and its willingness to mercilessly mock itself.

Hush 

Season 4, Episode 10

Given that TV and film revolve a lot around dialogue, the idea of making an episode that has very little dialogue in it was challenging for both cast and crew. But the episode brilliantly handles it, using character expressions, drawings and occasionally obscene hand gestures to allow the characters to communicate with one another.

Also remarkable is this episode isn’t just a gimmick, but a key part of the show’s mythology, bringing the Initiative out into the open and introducing the fan-favourite character of Tara. But a key selling point is the makeup of the Gentlemen, possibly Buffy's most iconic and memorable monster design (including Star Trek: Discovery actor and regular Del Toro collaborator Doug Jones as one of the monsters).

Superstar

Season 4, Episode 17

Arguably the show’s finest outright slice of comedy, this episode recasts the series as being about the exploits of Jonathan Levinson, actor, government agent, genius scientist and all-round good guy, complete with its own title sequence. It’s clear early on that Jonathan has cast a spell to make himself cooler, but the fun comes from seeing how his status as superhero has been integrated into the season’s ongoing storylines. In retrospect the episode is also a little tragic, foreshadowing as it does Jonathan’s later return in Seasons 6 and 7 under less humourous circumstances. 

Restless

Season 4, Episode 22

Buffy goes full Twin Peaks in the Season 4 finale, an episode set in the shared dreamworld of the four core characters as they are hunted by a mysterious creature. The episode is steeped in mythology and metaphors, some of them highly portentous and significant, others…not so much. The episode features a mixture of whimsy, comedy and horror, expertly combined by Joss Whedon into something offbeat, strange but enjoyably compelling. 

Family 
Season 5, Episode 6

Tara is, arguably, Buffy’s most popular low-key character. Introduced in Season 4 as a love interest for Willow and a fellow witch, the writers seemed to struggle a little to find her stuff to do that wasn’t tied in with Willow. The response was to make her the conscience and most empathetic of the Scooby Gang, always willing to listen and not judge. That makes this episode – where Tara’s family come to town and turn out to be manipulative and abusive – all the more tragic as Tara is unjustly subjected to persecution by her own supposed loved ones (including an early role for Amy Adams). But the actors do great work and the resolution, where Spike saves the day more in exasperation at how stupid everyone’s being than out of altruism, is memorably entertaining.

Fool for Love

Season 5, Episode 7

After promoting Spike to series regular, the producers struggled to find something for him to do, having to go to some lengths to “defang” him and make him an ally of the Scooby Gang. This episode is one of the very best uses of Spike in this period of the show, with Buffy tapping his knowledge of how he killed two Slayers to improve her own fighting style. Instead, Spike lays bear her soul and exposing the key weakness of every Slayer: their death wish. The result is a psychological battle between Slayer and vampire, undercut by extensive flashbacks and filled with excellent dialogue. Possibly James Marsters’ finest hour on both series (which is saying a lot). 

The Body 

Season 5, Episode 16

Bloody hell.

The Body is the best episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and, frankly, one of the twenty best episodes of television ever made. It’s also an episode that is very, very hard to watch. The premise is incredibly simple: Buffy comes home to find that her mother has died of natural causes some hours earlier. There is no hope of saving her – in the Buffyverse magic can only be used to save or resurrect someone who’s been killed by magic, not mundane illnesses – so the characters have to deal and process their grief.

The result is 44 minutes of genuinely upsetting television. There is no musical score and each act is just one long scene as different groups of characters try to process what has happened. Whedon’s attention to detail is heart-breaking, from Buffy’s brief fantasy that she’s come home in time and everything will fine, to Willow getting upset because she can’t find a top that Joyce complimented her about one time. Anya’s confusion over mortality, having only recently become human, results in a startling monologue about not understanding the stupidity of death which ranks as one of the series most memorable dialogue scenes.

Probably television’s finest single episode to ever focus on mortality and the transience of life, The Body is Buffy at its best and its most human. 

Life Serial

Season 6, Episode 5

This episode has a very simple and low-key premise: following her death and resurrection, Buffy has to find a job to pay for the hour she has inherited from her mother and also look after Dawn, her magically-created sister. In this episode she applies for a number of jobs, but is being stalked by the Trio, three silly minor villains from earlier seasons (well, two and the relative of another) who are testing their skills against her.

The result is a comic riot in the otherwise fairly bleak sixth season, culminating in a Groundhog Day riff as Buffy is trapped in a time loop in the magic shop and can’t leave until she’s sold her customer a magical mummy hand…which she can’t do because the hand has become 1) animate and 2) homicidally psychotic.

Once you get over the comedy (the surprisingly endearing Evil Mummy Hand may be the greatest monster in the history of the show), the episode also has a lot to say about Buffy and how her view of ordinary life has become skewed by her status as the Slayer. The result is a great “standard” episode of the series, albeit one which falls apart when you start asking why the Watchers’ Council pays the Slayer’s Watcher but not the Slayer herself. Shouldn’t she be on the clock? 

Once More With Feeling 

Season 6, Episode 7
Yes, of course the musical episode is here. I’ve always found Once More to be vaguely overrated. It is of course great, but it is let down a little by a couple of dud songs and the revelation that Xander summoned the song demon for a giggle, which seems massively out of character. Get over that, and the result is quite entertaining, an old-skool Hollywood musical extravaganza with some great songs (apart from those duds) and the showcasing of the cast’s musical ability, with Amber Benson particularly destroying everyone with her Kate Bush-inspired love song. Contrived as hell but great entertainment, and clever in how it drives forward the main story arc for Season 6. 

Tabula Rasa

Season 6, Episode 8

Picking up after the musical and its huge character revelations, this episode sees Willow trying to use magic to fix all the relationships that have gone wrong, but instead things go cataclysmically awry and everyone’s memories are wiped. The result is darkly amusing as the characters try to figure out their names, motivations and abilities just from context (resulting in Spike concluding that he is Giles’s son) whilst also taking on a group of vampires with no idea of how to fight them.

Dead Things 

Season 6, Episode 13

If Season 6 is “the bleak season”, Dead Things is arguably when it turned the bleakness dial right up to 11. The Trio, a fairly ineffectual threat all season, suddenly turn lethal when they accidentally kill Warren’s ex-girlfriend (whom they’d been planning to turn into an actual sex slave because yikes) and then try to frame Buffy for the crime. By this point Buffy has started sleeping with Spike, rationalising what should be a repugnant act by the idea that she came back from death “wrong,” which is why Spike is able to harm her in combat when his Initiative implant should prevent that.

This episode is dark and troubling and delves deep into Buffy’s soul, and what it digs up is unpleasant (Buffy laughing at one of Spike’s jokes about murdering innocent people is a rather telling moment). But it also holds up a mirror to Buffy when Tara confirms that there’s nothing wrong with her: Spike can hurt her solely because her aura or psychic frequency was slightly changed by her death experience. Buffy realises that her relationship with Spike is rooted solely in her own psychology and problems and she suffers a full-on breakdown, not helped by Tara telling her her friends will forgive her. Arguably Sarah Michelle Gellar and Amber Benson’s finest acting moments of the entire series. 

Conversations with Dead People

Season 7, Episode 7

Buffy the Vampire Slayer would occasionally use standard TV tropes for its episodes as well as blazing its own trail. Season 6 gave us Normal Again, in which Buffy wakes up in a lunatic asylum and has to rationalise her experiences in the rest of the series as the result of a psychotic break. That episode didn’t work quite as well as it should (and suffered in comparison to Deep Space Nine’s near-contemporary Far Beyond the Stars). Conversations with Dead People gives us a lengthy discussion between each character and another character who has previously died, a device recently used by Neil Gaiman in his Babylon 5 episode Day of the Dead.

Conversations possibly works a little better, because it ties more firmly into the season arc by having the First Evil directly confront the key characters for the first time. Not being able to use Tara is a shame (although actress Amber Benson’s reasons for not returning – as she didn’t want to present an evil version of Tara – are sound) but the dialogue is pretty sharp in all of the exchanges and the episode is notable for introducing Joss Whedon to Jonathan Woodward, who would go on to appear on both Firefly and Angel in memorable roles. 

Chosen

Season 7, Episode 22
The grand finale of the series and an echo of the original in some ways, with the four core Scooby Gang members reunited for one last battle against the First Evil and the Hellmouth. The scale is epic, with numerous allies and recurring characters brought in to help, and the stakes are high. The ending is perhaps a little more epic than the budget strictly allows for, but it’s certainly a satisfying ending on both an action and emotional level. Some character deaths are a bit perfunctory (barely anyone caring about Anya dying is startling) but overall Buffy goes out the way it came in, kicking and screaming.

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Amazon LORD OF THE RINGS maps hint at a new setting and a possible UNFINISHED TALES licence

Amazon has been drip-feeding a series of maps and tweets related to their upcoming Lord of the Rings prequel TV series, suggesting that they may have decided to take the show in a radically new direction and may have acquired the rights to Unfinished Tales along the way.

Most previous reports had suggested that Amazon's project would be set between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and would focus on the adventures of a young Aragorn. However, Amazon's maps suggest that the story could be set considerably earlier.

The first clue was on the second map released (after the first, blank one), which named the major regions of Middle-earth but left the Shire, Gondor, Arnor and Rohan off the map. Most tellingly, the map features "Calenardhon," the ancient name for the lands south and east of Fangorn that later became the kingdom of Rohan. The presence of "Calenardhon" immediately suggests a setting prior to the founding of Rohan in the year 2509 of the Third Age (518 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings proper begin). Although Calenardhon was the name of the north-westernmost province of Gondor before it was ceded to Rohan, the name was also a regional one; it's earliest chronological use in the canon is in the story "Aldarion and Erendis" in Unfinished Tales, which it is used as a regional name as early as the 8th century of the Second Age, long before the founding of Gondor.

The third map adds more names and further suggests a time period. In particular, the addition of the name Laurelindórenan is very interesting. This was the Sindarin name given to the elven kingdom later known as Lothlórien. The mode Laurelindórenan seems to have been the standard name used until around the time of the War of Sauron and the Elves, following the forging of the Rings of Power, when Galadriel and Celeborn took up leadership in Laurelindórenan and the name of the realm was changed, as a result of Galadriel's magical ring enhancing the natural beauty of the kingdom.

The other interesting addition is that of Ras Morthil. Ras Morthil is the southern-most major mountain on the cape of Andrast, a south-westerly offshoot of the White Mountains (the great mountain range dividing Rohan from Gondor). Ras Morthil and the mountains of Andrast were the original home of the Druédain or "Woses", a diminutive race of men who play a brief but key role in the events of The Lord of the Rings when they provide intelligent to the Rohirrim on how to bypass a flanking force Sauron had sent to delay them whilst his armies attacked Minas Tirith (the woses were cut from the film for time reasons). By the time of The Lord of the Rings the region has become known as Drúwaith Iaur, referring to the Druédain as extinct (erroneously), a name adopted in the Third Age but not present on this map.

These clues seem to suggest that the map was not created any later than the second millennium of the Second Age, by the end of which Laurelindórenan had become Lothlórien and the other names would all be extant. Earlier in the Second Age could also be possible, but the region of Enedwaith was heavily forested up until around the 8th and 9th century, when Númenórean logging started to destroy the forests. The forests were mostly gone by the time of the War of Sauron and the Elves (1693-1701 SA). The absence of the forests on the map suggest that either Amazon's mapmakers missed that detail of the map dates from late in this period.

A mural depicting Ost-in-Edhil, capital city of Eregion, by artist Alan Lee. This artwork was created for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and appears on a wall in Rivendell.

The logical conclusion, then, is that the "Young Aragorn" story has been dropped and the story will instead focus on one of the most interesting periods in the history of Middle-earth: the forging of the Rings of Power themselves.

This is good, given that the story of how the Rings were forged is itself epic and worthy. Sauron, in the guise of Annatar, an elven prince and master craftsmen, visits the great elven smiths of Eregion and corrupts them into forging the Rings of Power. Using their knowledge, Sauron then creates the One Ruling Ring. This perversion of the elves' craft triggers a great war which Sauron nearly wins, overrunning most of the elven kingdoms and driving them back to the sea, before Númenor enters the war on the elves' side. The story involves familiar Lord of the Rings characters such as Elrond, Galadriel, Celeborn, Gil-galad and Círdan, but also a lot of new characters. Of course, there are few better subjects for a Lord of the Rings prequel series than the Rings of Power themselves.

There are other possibilities, such as "Young Aragorn" still being the setting and the story will revolve around this map and backstory in some fashion. There's also the delicious possibility that the series will be an anthology one, with different settings and focuses each season, moving back and forth through Middle-earth's history.

Most intriguingly from all of this is one of rights. The Tolkien Estate is working closely with Amazon but, until now, had not confirmed or indicated if it had licensed the rights to any other Tolkien material, as Amazon's deal with New Line/Warner Brothers (itself licensed from Tolkien Enterprises twenty-four years ago) covers only The Lord of the Rings alone. Not even The Hobbit is included, as those rights are tied up with MGM and, after the fiasco of the Hobbit movie trilogy, it was decided not to involve MGM in this new project. However, the detailed account of the War of Sauron and the Elves and names Andrast and Ras Morthil are given only in Unfinished Tales, not The Lord of the Rings. To use those names, at all, Amazon must have reached a new licensing deal with the Tolkien Estate on pain of lawsuits. The previous Middle-earth movies had to go to some lengths not to use any material from Unfinished Tales or The Silmarillion, so the use of such names here is highly telling.

The truth of the matter should become clearer as Amazon continues to reveal more information.

Funcom pick up the rights to make three DUNE video games

With excitement building over the new Dune movie, a gaming company has belatedly remembered that the franchise has had great success in the video game arena and has moved to create a series of new games to tie in with the film.

Emperor: Battle for Dune (2001)

Funcom has picked up the rights from Legendary Entertainment to make three games. The first of these will be an open-world multiplayer game, which fits Funcom's existing modus operandi: their previous games developed include Conan Exiles, Anarchy Online and Secret World Legends.

Funcom have also developed a model focusing on single-player titles, having recently scored a reasonable hit with the tactical combat game Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. This opens the possibility that Funcom may develop one or two single player games alongside the MMO.

The Dune franchise has a long history in video games, starting with the excellent adventure/strategy hybrid Dune in 1992, which was swiftly followed by Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis, widely considered (possibly erroneously) to be the first real-time strategy game. The game was remade to great success as Dune 2000 (1998) and followed by a further sequel, Emperor: The Battle for Dune (2001). A further adventure game, Frank Herbert's Dune (also 2001), was not successful and remains the last officially-released Dune game, although fan mods for other games have been released since then.

The new Dune film will be out in late 2020, and I imagine Funcom hope to release at least one of these games around this time.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6

The world has been saved, but the cost was high. Willow Rosenberg, now a powerful witch, decides to fix the problem and succeeds, but sets in motion a chain of events that will, once again, threaten the world.

What happens when everything goes wrong at once?

This is a question that many people - perhaps almost all people - will face at some point in their lives, when not just one thing goes horrendously wrong but suddenly multiple problems crop up together. Work, relationships and family problems become insurmountable, leading to unhealthy coping mechanisms, addictions, exceptionally poor relationship choices and a failure to communicate effectively with friends.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer always worked most effectively as a metaphor, using demons to stand in for school bullies or a magical threat to the world as a stand in for academic stresses. In Season 6 the show still does that, but it also takes a surprisingly deep dive into real stresses and anxieties. Sure, the root causes of the stresses our characters encounter are supernatural - such as Buffy's PTSD after suffering horrendously in the Season 5 finale - but the ways they cope are remarkably ordinary. If Seasons 1-3 of Buffy were about the traumas of high school and Seasons 4-5 were about college life and starting to realise your own place in the world, Season 6 is about becoming an adult and suddenly having real responsibilities land on your lap, and the realisation that you are in control of your own life and should really try not to mess it up.

It's bold move for a show that previously mixed real life issues with metaphors, comedy and romance, and like most such bold moves it was (and remains, seventeen years on) very divisive among fans. People who tuned in to Buffy to see the Slayer kick ass, Xander make a funny quip and Giles get exasperated felt uncomfortable instead to see their characters having a miserable time of it and making one horrendous mistake after another.

This is exemplified by the annual external threat, the traditional "Big Bad," which in fact is pretty risible for most of the season: two very minor antagonists from previous seasons team up with a dude no-one remembers to take over Sunnydale. Their plans are mostly stupid and go wrong, and their actual threat value is somewhere around zero...right up until it isn't and then things go south very fast.

For most of the season, the show is more concerned with the long trip through the soul of Buffy Summers. Suffering severely after the events at the end of Season 5 and having to take care of her little sister and keep their house running, Buffy is also forced to quit college and get a horrible, soul-destroying job to keep the money coming in*. Buffy's problems are startlingly mundane and her reaction to them - internalising her stress, trying to keep a brave face on as everything comes crumbling down inside - is both natural and leads to horribly predictable coping mechanisms.

What's even worse is that our other characters are unable to help because they are also suffering their own problems: Xander and Anya have relationship issues, Willow's growing addiction to magic is causing problems, Spike doesn't know what his purpose is any more and even Dawn is making poor choices, whilst Giles is trying to work up the courage to leave Sunnydale for good. The Scooby Gang has become completely dysfunctional apart from the perennially unflappable Tara, who finds herself - not entirely comfortably - becoming the confidante of the group as they struggle to deal with their issues.

The path our heroes take to finally saving the day is a difficult one and eventually risks destroying the group altogether, but ultimately they succeed (and I feel confident saying that now, because you need some hope to get through these 22 episodes) in a manner that is appropriate, realistic and somewhat positive. It helps that the sixth season isn't completely a walk through nightmare city. There are some funny side-episodes and some brilliant individual scenes. The episode where Buffy goes full Groundhog Day (complete with Freaky Mummy Hand) is fantastic, as is another where Buffy gets turned invisible. The concluding three-episode arc of the season is very well-handled, finally giving our heroes a traditional battle to fight (kind of). The most infamous episode of the season, of course, is Once More With Feeling, the musical. I've always enjoyed the episode but also felt it was a tad overrated: some of the songs fail to land and the concluding Buffy/Spike song really doesn't work that well, which is problematic given how it's the moment the whole season revolves around. It's a hard episode to criticise too much, though, and it gave Whedon the experience he needed to make the much stronger musical special Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog six years later.

The season does handle its more challenging and realistic material well (especially since you can now blitz through it in a few hours, rather than over nine months), but there are a couple of problems. One is that Willow's "addiction = drugs" storyline is a bit too silly and on the nose, literally sending her into a 1960s-style trippy den of inequity at one point. It's at that point the subtext becomes not just text but an entire novel filled with the words "DO YOU GET IT YET?" Mercifully the show quickly gets a grip and moves on from that idea.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer's sixth and penultimate season (****½) is generally regarded as the darkest season of the show, which is definitely true. It's also the season that has aged the best since the show originally aired. It's the psychologically richest season of the show, the one which really gets under the characters' skin and explores them in a manner the show never managed before. I also suspect the twenty-somethings who were irked with the season's darkness because they were having a great time may be much more sympathetic to it as forty-somethings with baggage (cough). The season is available now as part of the complete Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD box set (UK, USA).

* Exactly why the Watchers' Council aren't picking up the tab, given Buffy and Giles's reinstatement in Season 5, is curiously unexplained.

First HIS DARK MATERIALS teaser trailer

The BBC has released the first teaser trailer for His Dark Materials, the new TV adaptation of Philip Pullman's novel series of the same name.

Season 1 of His Dark Materials will air late this year on the BBC in the UK and on HBO in the USA. A second season has been greenlit and is already in pre-production.

The teaser trailer features Dafne Keen as Lyra, Ruth Wilson as Ms. Coulter, James McAvoy as Lord Asriel, Clarke Peters as the Master of Jordan College and Lin-Manuel Miranda as Lee Scoresby. Notably absent are the daemons, although given we are still likely 7-8 months from transmission this is unsurprising as they may not have even been created yet.

The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson

The rebellion known as the Whirlwind has been defeated and now its last army is fleeing to the storied city of Y'Ghatan. The Malazan 14th Army, the Bonehunters, is in hot pursuit, keen to eradicate the last vestiges of rebellion on Seven Cities. But fate, the gods and the crafty general known as Leoman of the Flails have other ideas. Elsewhere, black ships from beyond the western oceans have set events are in motion that will engulf the greatest warriors in the world, Karsa Orlong of the Teblor and Icarium Lifestealer among them, and will see the Master of the Deck, Ganoes Paran, reluctantly take a direct hand in events.

Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series is initially made up of three interlocking story arcs: events on Genabackis, events on Seven Cities and events on the continent of Lether. For the first five books these story arcs have been broadly kept separate, but the sixth volume is when they decisively collide with one another. To put it another way, if Malazan was the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this is the first Avengers movie where you get to see characters from all the previous sub-series meet up and rub shoulders with one another.

There is undeniably a visceral thrill to this, as it represents the shape of the over-arcing Malazan storyline starting to come into focus. We start getting a better idea of what the series overall is going to be about and where the final battles will take place, although much remains murky. The feeling that the series is - at last! - starting to coalesce into one coherent, cohesive narrative is satisfying.

That said, it is also not handled entirely well. Previous Malazan books have been relatively smooth and consistent in their tone. This book feels a lot more inconsistent, a side-effect of mashing together characters from rather different previous books and storylines. There's also a slight air of contrivance to the book. Characters meet up in unlikely coincidences and mysterious new allies show up having spent two years pre-preparing a ritual which will come in handy at a key moment. Characters portentously declare things to one another that will leave the reader baffled. At one point, apropos of Douglas Adams, the moon actually explodes for no immediately discernible reason (which gets an explanation later on that still feels rather random).

The book is also a bit on the over-full side. Some Malazan novels are overlong and have a lot of filler in them; others (particularly the first three) are super-lean and bursting out of the page limit with incident, character developments and intriguing themes. The Bonehunters instead feels like the plots of three separate novels have been pushed into it and the focus careens between them with the grace of a pinball machine. So much is going on that major events and characters are given very short shrift indeed (the incidental death of one major, long-standing character is disappointing). In particular, the rise of two previous confirmed villains into positions of supreme power and influence comes out of left field and is fundamentally unconvincing, even moreso on a reread.

But this is still a Malazan novel written by Steven Erikson, so that means we still get excellent and brutally tragic set-piece events, wonderful moments of prose and dialogue and some effectively powerful reflections of the human condition. At one point the book threatens to turn into a disaster novel, which would have been interesting (fantasy disaster novels are pretty thin on the ground), although the book then shoots off in a different direction. There's also a series of phenomenal action sequences paced through the book, with the Malazans and Whirlwind soldiers clashing in a burning city, a naval face-off between two mighty powers and, most impressively, a long-running battle through the streets of a major city as Kalam and the Claw finally settle their debts. There's a lot of good stuff in this book, it just doesn't necessarily hang together as well as it should.

The Bonehunters (***½) is one of the more divisive books in the series - I've seen people lament it as the worst book in the series (which I don't agree with) and praise it as the best (which I also don't agree with) - but it's also one of the most action-packed and is the one that brings the focus and ultimate point of the series into sharper relief, which is a good thing. In order to get there, an (even for this series) unlikely number of plot twists and coincidences have to take place, which makes the book feel more artificial than almost any other Malazan novel released to date. That said, it's written so well that you may not even care. The book is available now in the UK and USA.

Amazon confirms first WHEEL OF TIME director

Amazon have announced that Uta Briesewitz will be directing the first two episodes of its Wheel of Time TV series.

The first two episodes, provisionally entitled Leavetaking and Shadow's Waiting, have been written by showrunner Rafe Judkins and Amanda Kate Shuman. It is believed that they will cover the first 300 pages or so of the first novel in the series, The Eye of the World.

Uta Briesewitz is a German cinematographer and director. Her TV resume is most impressive, including episodes of Orange is the New Black, The 100, Jessica Jones, Fear the Walking Dead, Iron Fist, The Defenders, The Deuce, Altered Carbon and Westworld. Her episode of Westworld, Season 2's Kiksuya, has attracted widespread critical acclaim and been cited as one of the best episodes of the series.

The first season starts shooting in September in and around Prague in the Czech Republic and is expected to air in Amazon in late 2020.